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\n Zohran Mamdani speaks during the Fighting Oligarchy town hall on Sept. 6, 2025, in New York City.\u00a0Photo: Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
\n Zohran Mamdani speaks during the Fighting Oligarchy town hall on Sept. 6, 2025, in New York City.\u00a0Photo: Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
Boy does it feel good in New York City. On Tuesday night, just over 30 minutes after polls closed, Zohran Mamdani won the election<\/a> to become the city\u2019s next mayor. To do so, he overcame substantial political headwinds: The man who will be our first Muslim mayor was constantly tarred as an antisemite<\/a> and, as too often seems to follow, was subject to an undercurrent of Islamophobic attacks about \u201csharia law\u201d and \u201cglobal jihad\u201d throughout the race. Mamdani also faced the city\u2019s ruling class of millionaires and billionaires<\/a>, who engaged in some heartwarming class solidarity by spending tens of millions<\/a> against him and vowing to flee the headquarters of global capital if he won, which perhaps motivated ordinary New Yorkers to turn out to support the mayor-elect. In other words, the New York assembly member stared down the ruling class and still won.<\/p>\n In a stunning turn of events, many of those high-class naysayers have come right back around to offer a helping hand in governing the city, effectively bending the knee to the man they cast as an existential threat.<\/p>\n Chiefest among these converts is billionaire hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman, who famously contributed nearly $2 million of his own money to efforts to kill Mamdani\u2019s candidacy and warned <\/a>on social media that the city would \u201cbecome much more dangerous and economically unviable\u201d after Mamdani routed former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June Democratic primary. In that same Twitter tome, Ackman promised there were \u201chundreds of million of dollars of capital available\u201d if the right candidate would simply throw his hat in the race, and reduced the democratic will of the people to a plug-and-play scheme where this mythical person would be able to defeat Mamdani simply by running Michael Bloomberg\u2019s \u201chow-to-win-the-mayoralty IP.\u201d (It\u2019s well worth noting that New York saw the highest turnout in a mayoral election in more than 50 years<\/a>.) As a result, it was with no small measure of glee that I read the Pershing Square Capital boss\u2019s tweet <\/a>on Tuesday night at-ing Mamdani: \u201ccongrats on the win. Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.\u201d A rival billionaire hedge fund guy responded by calling this olive branch \u201cgimp-like<\/a>.\u201d If that\u2019s what it takes, so be it!<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the world of high finance, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who previously called <\/a>Mamdani \u201cmore a Marxist than a socialist\u201d and slammed him as pushing \u201cideological mush that means nothing in the real world,\u201d is also offering his help. In an interview with CNN<\/a> on Wednesday, Dimon urged Mamdani to call up the outgoing mayor of Detroit for advice because \u201cthat\u2019s the way you learn,\u201d which is more than a little bit condescending. The billionaire also said he left a message for Mamdani the day after the election and selflessly offered to meet with him: \u201cIf I find it productive, I\u2019ll continue to do it.\u201d (The mayor-elect, for his part, responded that he\u2019d take the CEO up on the offer, despite not agreeing across \u201cevery single issue.\u201d) With all due respect, New York City is not Detroit, a city that was hollowed out by corporate flight, and Dimon, whose bank has invested $2 billion <\/a>in that city\u2019s recovery, seems to know this full well. Detroit \u201cwasn\u2019t like New York, which is kind of healthy,\u201d he told CNN. That\u2019s a real understatement, especially for the ultra-wealthy.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the crypto billionaire Mike Novogratz urged his countrymen to reach out to Mamdani. \u201cOnce he\u2019s the mayor, we\u2019ve got to be sure he\u2019s successful in keeping New York a thriving community,\u201d he told <\/a>Bloomberg News on Wednesday, a \u201ccommunity\u201d for whom Novogratz did not say. \u201cHe\u2019s tapping into a message that\u2019s real: that we\u2019ve got a tale of two cities in the Dickensian sense, to a degree we haven\u2019t seen since we\u2019ve been alive, and can you address the affordability issue in creative ways without driving business out.\u201d The crypto industry might mourn the booster it had<\/a> in the outgoing mayor, but something tells me \u201cbusiness\u201d at large is going to be alright.<\/p>\n We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. Join us. <\/p>\n Join Our Newsletter <\/p>\n Thank You For Joining! <\/p>\n \n Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. <\/p>\n Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?\n <\/p>\n By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say everyone at the top has gracefully accepted the results. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, whose company was severely affected by new city rules limiting short-term rentals and who donated $2 million<\/a> total to two anti-Mamdani super PACs, hasn\u2019t publicly reacted to the news. Bloomberg, the former mayor who poured $5 million into fighting the red menace<\/a>, has also stayed quiet. Crashouts abounded<\/a> lower on the tax bracket as well.<\/p>\n It remains to be seen how Mamdani will govern and how big business will respond. Many onlookers have been eager to point out that the facts of governance and the world as it exists today will likely involve compromises and, as a result, disappointments. I\u2019m sure many New Yorkers would love for Mamdani to leave these billionaires on read for all eternity, but New Yorkers are not known for their naivet\u00e9. It\u2019s still a giddy feeling to see the masters of the universe sweat and prostrate themselves, if only for now. Our lame-duck, court-jester mayor got at least one thing right during his tenure: The haters truly do become your waiters at the table of success<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani speaks during the Fighting Oligarchy town hall on Sept. 6, 2025, in New York City.\u00a0Photo: Michael…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":360611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,16429,16426,16437,16430,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,16428,16434,16435,16436,16433,88804,56173,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,16431],"class_list":{"0":"post-360610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-article-type-article-post","10":"tag-day-thursday","11":"tag-language-english","12":"tag-medium","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-page-type-article","20":"tag-partner-factiva","21":"tag-partner-smart-news","22":"tag-partner-social-flow","23":"tag-subject-politics","24":"tag-subject-voices","25":"tag-time-20-00","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-united-states-of-america","28":"tag-unitedstates","29":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","30":"tag-us","31":"tag-usa","32":"tag-wc-0-999"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115504762392983539","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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